Present Past Past Present: A Personal Memoir - Softcover

Ionesco, Eugene

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0306808358 ISBN 13: 9780306808357

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 1998

Synopsis

Part diary, part autobiography, part self-analysis and commentary, this revealing memoir by the playwright of the Absurd is an expression of the writer's search for the wellsprings and justifications of his existence. Diary jottings mingle with searing memories of his authoritarian father, metaphysical musings with thoughts on anti-Semitism, his wartime experiences, Soviet death camps, and the sham of bourgeois "revolutionaries". There is also the occasional light-hearted fantasy, played out with children who might be his own; the germ of the idea for "Rhinoceros" and various passages of self-probing.

About this title

About the Author:

Eugene Ionesco (1910–1994), a Romanian-born Frenchman, was central to the Theater of the Absurd, a dramatic movement that abandons logical plot development, meaningful dialogue, and intelligible characters, and instead embraces anarchic comedy to convey the meaninglessness of modern man's existence in a universe ruled by chance. Ionesco's many works include: plays like The Bald Soprano, The Chairs, The Killer, Exit the King, and more than two dozen others; theater criticism (collected in Notes and Counter Notes); and this memoir, which critics have compared in spirit and vision to Pascal's Pensées, Milan Kundera's Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and Kafka's diaries.

Language Notes:

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

About this edition

• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0306808358
• ISBN 13: 9780306808357
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192